Thursday, April 30, 2009

Auntie Jazz watched the girls while Lone Star Pa and I went to his Teacher of the Year banquet tonight. It was so nice. We are so proud of him. He really is the most wonderful teacher ever. Ever. His students are so lucky.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Please join me on Mother's Day (May 10th) to demonstrate for the rights of our community's children to breathe clean and unpolluted air. Bring home-made signs and friends to the public sidewalks out in front of restaurant row on SPID (like in front of Macaroni Grill, etc. - it would be great if we had enough mamas and kids and allies to stretch all the way from Weber to Everhart, but let's focus on that most-trafficked area if we don't) from 10am to 1pm. Please forward this invitation to all of the mamas you know who do not want a major increase in the allergies and asthma that so many kids suffer from in our community. We can reclaim Mothers' Day as the day of action for children it was founded to be! Thank you!

Having basically spent March with the Lone Star Girl feeling so yucky and April ill myself as well, I have not been keeping up the writing momentum that I had going in January, February and earliest March. Certainly, I have not been spouting poetry this month, although I have written a little. I also am somewhat less comfortable posting new unpublished writing that I intend for publication these days since publishers are getting pretty persnickety about where stuff is on the Web, a trend that troubles me. Here, then, for National Poetry Month is an old poem of mine about the Lone Star Girl that ran in a long-ago issue of Lone Star Ma. I hope you enjoy it. Seems like yesterday . . .

Cubby

Cubbies

Ten plastic baskets on a low shelf in the kindergarten hallway

Nine empty but for a paper or twoA stray mittenA little hat

And the one that belongs to my daughter:Brimming everyday, overflowingThe assortment ever-changing, ever-growingLeaves, stones, palm seeds, assorted colored plastic beadsA hundred (she counted them) acornsA paper cup, temporary home for a junebug larva, Scribbles full of dragons and allicornsThe stuff of her days.

I dropped the Lone Star Girl and a friend off at the annual Earth Day/Bay Day festival this past weekend, but they called me to pick them up early because they were bored.

I planted some flowers with the Lone Star Baby this past weekend, also, but some dirt got stuck in her eye despite our best efforts to wash it out for awhile leading to some minor worry and drama until it finally washed out.

Lone Star Pa and I didn't get to go to Arbor Day at the Lone Star Baby's school because we had to work (although we did manage to contribute a blackberry bush at the last minute).

On Wednesday night, the Lone Star Girl volunteered at an Earth Day Fair that her science teacher organized with activities for younger children that the students had created. It sounded so cool. Lone Star Pa took the Lone Star Baby while I rested because I am still pretty sick. The Lone Star Baby had fun, but they left early, as did most of the little kids, according to them. Lone Star Pa said that many of the middle schoolers there were behaving so badly that he didn't feel the Lone Star Baby was safe there - what with the yardstick sword fights and flying bottle caps. Sounds like they needed me there. I would have taken care of that. Ah, well.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Last week, the Lone Star Girl was in her school's production of The Beggar's Opera in the district's Middle School One-Act Play Festival. I was rather heart-broken that we didn't get to go, but there was a parent performance of it Tuesday night at her school, and we really enjoyed that. She was quite wonderful.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

With the help of my mother, the Easter Bunny put exactly what the Lone Star Girl wanted for Easter in her her Easter basket: the chi hair straightener so she can have her desired punk rock hair styles, which cannot be achieved on hair as curly as hers with a regular, reasonably priced straightener. Usually she just likes the long part and the bangs parts in the front straightened by the chi and leaves the back wild and curly for her signature style, but here is a picture with most of it pretty straight:

The Lone Star Baby made a ring for me. She figured out that those little links of chain like metal beads have closures when she found one and she put a pink plastic bead (yes, they are everywhere - she is still finding beads in the house) on one and closed it in a circle for me. I love it.

She received a game of Pick up Sticks in her Easter basket and had designed her own version and got us to play it with her that night. She got two medicine cups and filled one with the removable top pieces of some cheap plastic bunny rings that had been egg-fillers and one with the ring parts of them. Then we had to try to draw one of the tops without moving the other tops in the cup (which was hard in that little cup) and if we succeeded, we got the ring part to attach to the top. My four-year-old has some pretty cool ideas.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Argh. Our little spring get-together was fun and I am glad we did it but I see now that we were kidding ourselves about being well again and so ready for parties, etc. Even this last Sunday, going to Meeting and First Day School was probably pushing it. The truth is that we have been battling nasty and sneaky respiratory bugs around here since about March 25th.

The Lone Star Girl actually missed three days of school. It is she and I who have had it bad. Each Sunday we feel we are well and then that night it just kicks in again. Last Sunday I thought we were finally about well and just needed to rest up this long weekend to regain our strength, and I think that was basically true for the Lone Star Girl this time (though it wasn't the Sunday before that, when we thought it was and had the party and although she definitely had it the worst when she did have it and is still a bit wiped out), but my own bug which had seemed to be steadily improving a tiny bit every day just tanked last Sunday night. I have felt that I am going to die all week. I have crawled uselessly into school each day, knowing that my days off must be saved for the Lone Star Baby's day off on Monday and her two school programs and a doctor appointment in May, but I have been so very sick.

The doctor's office took pity on me and agreed to see me after school on Tuesday. The doctor said it was usually true that when your respiratory virus has been getting better and suddenly takes a dramatic turn for the worse after a couple of weeks as mine did , it is time to go to the doctor to see about sinus infections and bronchitis, but he said my chest sounded okay and I had no fever (I never get fevers - I'm tough like that). He wrote me a scrip for a Z-Pack but told me he'd wait to fill it. Dear man talked responsibly about letting the body fight it off being best. I so appreciated his uncommon wisdom in this era of drug-pushers but I went home, filled the scrip and took it. The truth is that my modern life really doesn't give me the time and rest for what is best and I still feel like dying - and frankly I doubt he sees many women who can take the time for his sane remedies. Rich ones maybe. I have finished the Z-Pack now and am taking lots of other drugs - Mucinex, Sudafed, Mydol - you name it. I still feel like crap. At least there is no school today.

Needless to say, we are not at Yearly Meeting. We couldn't have afforded it anyway, really, but I would have made everything else more precarious to manage if it had only been money. I know how important it is that we prioritize Yearly Meeting, especially for the Lone Star Girl who has a had a rough year. Even before I got worse, though, it was obvious that we had been too ill to travel instead of rest this weekend...that we really had to have more rest before carrying on with the rest of the school year. I feel bad for not going but already feel that there will not be enough rest this weekend to get me where I need to be, health-wise. I am so, so, so very drained....

Saturday, April 04, 2009

The local corporate cabal just won almost every single seat in our City Council election - it is very scary. There's a run-off in one district and updated election results show that it includes the incumbent, Priscilla Leal, who is the only person who has shown any concern at all about plans to build a coal-burning petroleum coke plant on our port - and to build it without the gasification technology that could significantly cut down on the pollution. It's bad enough that the city is even considering a petroleum coke plant at all instead of some good clean energy technology to create real jobs for this century, but it is unacceptable without gasification. Unacceptable.

We are already a city with many refineries but this plant, called Las Brisas, would create more pollution than all of those sources put together. Every person who won seems just fine with adding that much pollution to our air and our bay - it will bring jobs, they say!

It will also bring us into non-attainment of clean air standards, though, which will bring major fines. And since clean air standards are bound to get higher than they were under President Bush, it is not actually true that using the gasification technology is not economically viable as they try to say. Their old way of doing business is about to become very not economically viable, but they can't see that. And they don't care about my daughter and all the other children in this town who have allergies and asthma and need cleaner air, not more polluted air. My daughter's allergist, who seems generally to be a rather wealthy and conservative business man, has been one of the leading protesters against this plant being built. The Nueces County Medical Society is against it as well. These City Council pirates, however, say that we should just let the state decide what constitutes unacceptable pollution and build the plant if the state will permit it. I say that no one that irresponsible has any business in public office.

One of the men who got elected is married to a woman who is doing PR work for the company that is trying to build the plant. I would call that a conflict of interest. And get this - she is the president of the school board. I call that a crime. How dare she? So many of our school children already struggle with missed days of school due to asthma...she has no business claiming to care about education when she is simultaneously trying to do something that will steal the health that children need to learn.

This is a very bad day for Corpus Christi. But they are not going to build that plant in my town without gasification. Mark my words. They are not.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

It's this need we writers have - to have everyone read our work. Thank you! Here is my newest column for We the People News. This one was originally scheduled for the January print edition before economics intervened.

About Me

Lone Star Ma is an employed mama of two Lone Star Daughters. She loves Texas dearly but is sadly underachieving its average of 3 guns for every man, woman and child. She eats mushroom fajitas instead of beef ones and has been known to breastfeed during City Council Meetings. Lone Star Ma has a pathological need to read a LOT and is into peace, equality and the Gulf of Mexico.

Disclaimer

So saith Lone Star Ma: This blog is mine and all material on it is mine. I may let you use something on it if you ask, but ask. I reserve the right to delete or block comments and commentators that/who I find offensive. Be nice.